President Trump makes sixth trip to Palm Beach and brings Musk too
President Trump makes his sixth visit to Palm Beach since becoming president and brings along Elon Musk and his young son X on March 14, 2025.
(This story has been updated to add new information and to change or add a photo or video..)
WEST PALM BEACH — Protesters lined up outside the Tesla showroom in President Donald Trump’s home county on Saturday were met by honks, mainly in support.
Then, a black SUV drove into the crowd of more than 100 protesters. No one was injured but the near-miss incident underscores the rising tension over the automaker’s CEO, Elon Musk, and his high-profile, and highly controversial, role in the Trump administration.
“He drove into a crowd of senior citizens,” said Mark Offerman of the Democratic Progressive Caucus Palm Beach County about the driver. “Everybody was able to move out, but two older women were really almost clipped. We immediately called the cops.”
The driver of the vehicle, a Nissan Pathfinder, abruptly parked on the sidewalk where protesters had assembled and jumped out of the car, claiming his brakes and electronics had gone out, Offerman said. He told protesters to “leave the car alone.”
Upon arriving, police spoke with the driver and interviewed about five protesters, who also provided photo and video evidence of what had happened. The man was arrested at the scene and will be charged with assault, according to a deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
The incident happened around 1 p.m., roughly an hour into the three-hour streetside demonstration. The driver claimed to be an employee of the West Palm Beach Tesla showroom where the demonstration was taking place.
His car was later towed. No further information about the man was available Saturday evening.
The potentially serious occurrence took place amid a climate of boycotts and vandalism of Tesla autos and showrooms across the country. On Friday, Trump posted on his social media platform that the “sick terrorist thugs” causing physical damage should get “20 year sentences.”
Saturday’s protest, the first of six planned for every Saturday through April 26, was a peaceful gathering outside the West Palm Beach Tesla location. The rally, organized by the Democratic Progressive Caucus, was the latest in a series of demonstrations against Musk, his federal budget chainsawing and his Tesla auto company, which has become a flashpoint on the political spectrum.
“We’re outraged and we’re appalled,” Offerman said. “What we hope to do here in Palm Beach County, where the nerve center of the GOP is, is wake everybody up to this fact.
“Mar-a-Lago is here. Trump is here. This is his home. We have big problems with the way that our government functions, and find it very anti-American. So we want to wake people up, and we’re taking on this national call.”
Around 150 people showed up at the Tesla site at 5544 Okeechobee Blvd., their banners simple but direct. “Lawless” and “shame” were spread across two of them.
Carol Smith, a snowbird from Detroit, held a whiteboard that read “Musk is a rat” as traffic rolled by.
“I’m extremely worried about our democracy,” Smith said. “Trump doesn’t follow any rules. Musk has no official position. He shouldn’t be anywhere near anything.”
Smith was there with her sister Valerie, who chose not to give her last name.
“I hate the fact that we’ve stopped all foreign aid,” Valerie said. “We are such a rich country, we can help ourselves, our citizens and other people. But no, we just want to help the rich.”
Together, the sisters have participated in about 10 protests in Palm Beach County, advocating for immigrant rights and against Trump at his golf course, when he’s visiting the county.
“There was a lot of fear today because he’s called people that are at these kinds of demonstrations ‘domestic terrorists,'” Smith said. “It just angered me all the more. How dare he try to intimidate us?”
Tesla shares drop as criticism of Musk billows
The protest followed a week in which Musk and Tesla were in full damage control.
Since Musk began budget slashing two months ago, shares in his electric and innovative automaker have collapsed. Once trading near $500 apiece, the stock closed at $248.71 on Friday, 50% off its 52-week high in late December.
Earlier this month, Trump staged a photo opp with Musk at the White House with several Tesla autos to bolster the automaker’s sagging appeal with customers and investors. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also touted buying Tesla shares in a TV interview, earning him an ethics violation complaint.
The highpoint for Tesla stock came with post-2024 election exuberance when Musk was heralded for having had a major hand in delivering Trump a victory Nov. 5. Since Trump returned to Washington, however, Musk has had a tempestuous run as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a quasi-public entity charged with radically dieting the federal government.
The slashing of federal spending was Musk’s idea, one he publicly floated to Trump in an early August chat the two held on the X social media platform, also owed by Musk. There, the Tesla and Space X leader pitched Trump on creating a government efficiency committee with the goal of eliminating wasteful expenditures and overspending by Washington.
During the end stages of the presidential campaign, Musk upped the ante vowing he could remove $2 trillion out of the annual federal budget, which is roughly $6 trillion. Once Trump took office, Musk rushed into the task, and into a mushrooming firestorm of controversy.
Musk, DOGE mass firings of federal workers has been tempestuous
DOGE’s seemingly arbitrary and counterproductive firings of federal employees, including hurricane hunter flight directors and national park rangers in Florida, has been alarming to critics. He has elicited ridicule by forcing all federal employees to submit weekly emails bullet-pointing five accomplishments.
Other measures, including shuttering important programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development, have created intense friction from within the Trump administration itself. Earlier this month, there was a reported blowup between Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.
Trump responded by hosting both Musk and Rubio at a Mar-a-Lago dinner on March 8 during one of his weekend sojourns. Trump eventually gave Cabinet secretaries the first dibs at jettisoning personnel. And he word-changed his orders to Musk saying budget reductions should be done with a “scalpel” rather than a hatchet.
An Economist/YouGov poll earlier this moth showed just 38% of respondents said they supported the federal employee layoffs being pursued by DOGE.
Musk has also soured others with antics such as waving a chainsaw onstage at a conservative conference CPAC and calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” The threat against the retirement program has been particularly contentious, with as many as one-fifth of Florida’s population receiving Social Security benefits.
This week, Musk was also at the center of pushback over reports he was to get a briefing on U.S. military planning for a potential conflict with China.
Jasmine Fernández is a journalist covering Delray Beach and Boca Raton for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at jfernandez@pbpost.com and follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @jasminefernandz. Help support our work. Subscribe today.
